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AWS Lake Formation vs Amazon Redshift comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 4, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Redshift
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
72
Ranking in other categories
Data Warehouse (5th), Database Management Systems (DBMS) (8th)
AWS Lake Formation
Ranking in Cloud Data Warehouse
7th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
5.7
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2026, in the Cloud Data Warehouse category, the mindshare of Amazon Redshift is 7.2%, up from 6.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of AWS Lake Formation is 4.9%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Cloud Data Warehouse Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
AWS Lake Formation4.9%
Amazon Redshift7.2%
Other87.9%
Cloud Data Warehouse
 

Featured Reviews

PJ
Data Analytics, Ai & Automation Lead at a venture capital & private equity firm with 10,001+ employees
Performance optimization and scaling adaptations enable efficient data management
Amazon Redshift does not work alone and requires integration with other AWS tools like S3 and Glue for a complete ecosystem. They should bring the entire ETL data management process into Amazon Redshift. Either they should move Amazon Redshift under Glue, or Glue should be brought under Amazon Redshift. The initial setup could also be improved, particularly in terms of sizing, as it requires trial and error to get right.
Ciro Baldim Guerra - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr Analytics Engineer at Itau Unibanco S.A.
Has improved data governance by enabling clear ownership and structured access across teams
In my company, Itaú, we don't utilize all AWS offerings due to rigorous security measures. We operate approximately six to eight months behind other available services. I'm uncertain if gaps exist because of this limitation, though the system functions effectively for us. AWS Lake Formation offers column-level access control for databases, but we haven't implemented this feature either because it hasn't been approved by our compliance, governance, or security areas. In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions. However, I struggle to identify specific improvements needed in AWS Lake Formation.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The solution's flexibility is its most valuable feature. It's also easy to scale and has relatively painless pricing."
"I find the most valuable features to be the MPP style of processing, which mostly all of the data warehouses provide. The ability to integrate all other AWS services, such as NSS and S3, with little effort is very helpful. The service is well maintained, there are update patches frequently."
"I have primarily used the Redshift Spectrum feature and found it most valuable."
"The initial setup is easy."
"The valuable features are performance, data compression, and scalability."
"With the tools we have, Amazon Redshift has the features to query efficiently."
"Its simplicity in configuration, cost-effectiveness due to being in the cloud and close to our data sources, and the fact that it's a managed service that is scalable and reliable are highly valuable."
"The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good."
"We have observed measurable benefits in terms of cost savings, time savings, resource savings, and efficiency improvements in our workflows."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
"The integration of AWS Lake Formation with the IAM for authentication and authorization is very good; I didn't have any problems in the setup and thought it was simple."
"AWS Lake Formation has several valuable features that enhance data management, and one particularly beneficial aspect is how it facilitates better collaboration within data teams."
"The most important advantage in using AWS Lake Formation is its ability to connect the data lake to the other technologies in AWS. This is what I advise my clients."
"It is seamlessly integrated within the AWS ecosystem, making it straightforward to manage access patterns for AWS-native services."
"The solution is quite good at handling analytics. It's done a good job at helping us centralize them."
"AWS Lake Formation significantly improves the structure of the data mesh, making it superior to previous structures we used."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is a complex process, especially for someone who is not familiar with nodes and configuring terms like RPUs."
"The product must provide new indexes that support special data structures or data types like TEXT."
"We recently moved from the DC2 cluster to the RA3 cluster, which is a different node type and we are finding some issues with the RA3 cluster regarding connection and processing. There is room for improvement in this area. We are in talks with AWS regarding the connection issues."
"There are physically too many pipelines for a company of this size to maintain. For a data scientist, it's very difficult to learn the data in all of these different environments."
"The initial deployment was complex."
"It takes a lot of time to ingest and update the data."
"AWS Snowflake has a very good feature for cloning databases. It makes it easy to clone a data warehouse, which is useful. I would like to see this feature in Redshift."
"The speed of the solution and its portability needs improvement."
"Information about the pricing, cost, and setup cost of the AWS solutions would be beneficial."
"In our current setup, everyone from my business unit uses the same consumer account. When access is requested for a table, everyone using that business unit account receives access. This could present a security concern, though it benefits new team members who automatically receive all necessary access permissions."
"Despite following official documentation, configuration problems persisted, requiring weeks of support from multiple AWS engineers to resolve."
"Lake Formation could enhance its capabilities in audit logs, real-time monitoring, and advanced data governance."
"For the end-users, it's not as user-friendly as it could be."
"The main challenge we faced with AWS Lake Formation was related to cross-account sharing. Granting access to other AWS accounts for tables or databases in a different AWS account was somewhat difficult."
"In our experience what could be improved are not the support, performance or monitoring, but at a managerial level, the very expensive professional services of AWS. This could be an area of improvement for them. It's too expensive to acquire their support."
"Rather than creating an additional hundred tools, optimizing a tool to have a centralized location to do governance would be beneficial."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is cheap considering what it provides; I rate it five out of five for affordability."
"I have heard complaints about the solution’s pricing, and thus I rate it as a five."
"It is an expensive product."
"This solution implements the pay-as-you-use model, so no license. Pricing could be cheaper."
"The solution is available at a mid-range price compared to other vendors."
"It's not very pricey compared to other tools. I would rate the price as 5 out of 10."
"The cost will depend on how you set up your warehouse and what kind of data you store."
"The cost must be improved."
"AWS Lake Formation is a bit expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
19%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Transportation Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
22%
Computer Software Company
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business27
Midsize Enterprise21
Large Enterprise28
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise15
 

Questions from the Community

How does Amazon Redshift compare with Microsoft Azure Synapse Analytics?
Amazon Redshift is very fast, has a very good response time, and is very user-friendly. The initial setup is very straightforward. This solution can merge and integrate well with many different dat...
What do you like most about Amazon Redshift?
The tool's most valuable feature is its parallel processing capability. It can handle massive amounts of data, even when pushing hundreds of terabytes, and its scaling capabilities are good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for AWS Lake Formation?
I don't understand much about the pricing of AWS Lake Formation, but I know how to search for the cost of Glue jobs, and I use the calculator in Amazon. I use a tool to preview the cost based on th...
What needs improvement with AWS Lake Formation?
Regarding areas of AWS Lake Formation that could be improved or enhanced, I prefer not to answer, mainly because I do not believe that I would be the most valuable person to ask, as I have not used...
What is your primary use case for AWS Lake Formation?
My usual use cases for AWS Lake Formation involved securing and governing the data resources that we configured in AWS, but we did not use the analytics or machine learning capabilities specificall...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Liberty Mutual Insurance, 4Cite Marketing, BrandVerity, DNA Plc, Sirocco Systems, Gainsight, Blue 449
bp, Cerner, Expedia, Finra, HESS, intuit, Kellog's, Philips, TIME, workday
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Lake Formation vs. Amazon Redshift and other solutions. Updated: February 2026.
882,333 professionals have used our research since 2012.